By: Marta Huebsch
9 Oct, 2019
On September 23, 2019, CIFAR held the first of four The Walrus Talks presented by CIFAR.
Held at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, the theme was Boundaries: how divisions shape our lives, what lies between borders and what membership means now.
The theme of the night’s talk was inspired by the visionary research being conducted by CIFAR fellows in the new Boundaries, Membership & Belonging program. The program brings together leading social scientists and political and legal theorists who collaborate to make sense of membership politics. They ask whether we can re-draw boundaries in a way that is inclusive without losing solidarity and the possibility of collective action. In short, why membership matters in a globalizing world.
Speakers included four CIFAR fellows:
- Keith Banting, advisor in the CIFAR Boundaries, Membership & Belonging program
- Adrian M. Owen, co-director of the CIFAR Azrieli Brain, Mind and Consciousness program
- Paige Raibmon, fellow in the CIFAR Successful Societies program
- Prerna Singh, fellow in the CIFAR Successful Societies and Boundaries, Membership & Belonging programs
Watch The Walrus Talks here:
Keith Banting:
Show Transcript
hi my name is Keith Banting and I want
to talk to you this evening for seven
minutes about what I’ve called the
biggest boundary biggest at least
geographically in the Canadian context
perhaps not the most divisive sorts of
boundaries that beige Paige was speaking
about maybe more intensely divisive but
it the boundaries I want to talk about
generated by the system of immigration
are clearly powerful boundaries there
are a legal boundary and in some cases
of physical one as in the case the
United States these are boundaries
between us and them
indeed immigration politics are all
about boundaries all the time these
boundaries are enforced by the state and
fear that a country’s borders are not
secure generates considerable public
anxiety in recent years many
international commentators have been
impressed by the strength of public
support for an expansive immigration
program in Canada at a time of
considerable backlash elsewhere Canada
has actually been increasing its
immigration annual intake when in late
2015 the federal government accepted
50,000 Syrian refugees most commentators
Canadian and international agreed with
The Economist magazine that the secret
to the Canadian comfort with immigration
is its distinctive culture and identity
both of which celebrate diversity and
yet there are other voices in our
politics other voices which challenge
immigration and which sight culture as a
reason for challenging the immigration
program
and for challenging multiculturalism
moreover moreover we know that populist
backlash elsewhere has been driven by a
toxic combination not just of culture
and cultural anxiety but also of economy
of economics and economic anxiety and so
I think I’m going to start by suggesting
that we should be careful about assuming
that support for immigration in this
country can be based on cultural grounds
alone I think we need to take a little
deeper so let’s step back and let’s ask
when and why the current level of
support for immigration emerged
Canadians have not always been
supportive of immigration historians
have to have documented the many dark
dark episodes in our history in the
first half of the 20th century but I
think we also need to pay much closer
attention to our recent history because
until the mid 1990s the overwhelming
bulk of Canadians believe that
immigration levels were too high this is
a chart which tracks support for
immigration in this country for and it’s
it’s the response of Canadians in a
survey to the proposition there’s too
much immigration in Canada the Green
Line shows the proportion of respondents
who agreed with that proposition and the
red line indicates the proportion of
respondents who disagreed now what is
striking here is that until the mid
1990s a substantial portion between 60
and 65 percent of Canadians thought that
immigration levels were much too high
and then stunningly strikingly rapidly
cheap things changed and Canadians
shifted their views and within five
years the proportion of Canadians who
thought that immigration levels were –
are too high
dropped significantly and those who said
who are comfortable with the existing
levels of immigration basically doubled
and this happened within five years
which is a remarkably short period of
time
and it’s these attitudes which have been
stable since then small perturbations
but that basic story continues so this
is a remarkable change and a colleague
and I have been trying to understand it
where did this come from what drove it
what sustains it our effort our efforts
of uncovered a variety factors but I
would like to stick to just to the
economy and the and our culture first on
the economy I’m very old I you know you
can tell from the color of my hair I’m
old enough to remember when the
unemployment rate in this country hits
13% in the recession of the early 1980s
and over 11% in the recession of the
early 1990s in those years support for
immigration rose and fell with the
business cycle but the unemployment rate
this unemployment rate dropped steadily
in the 1990s
Meech reaching a much lower and
relatively stable level in the 2000s and
at the moment we’re running a in a five
percent range almost a third of what it
was in the early 1980s and the Canadian
and recessions in Canada have been
relatively mild certainly the recession
of 2007 eight which was so powerfully
destructive and a lot of European
society was relatively mild here I think
that the sort of the better economic
context in which immigration attitudes
are formed makes it much more difficult
to scapegoat newcomers to complain that
immigrants are stealing our jobs and in
our work the decline in the unemployment
rate turns out to have been the
strongest individual factor in
explaining the change in attitudes the
economic impact this economic impact was
reinforced by the actual transformation
of the immigration program into an
economic program in Canada it’s a mantra
that Canada’s adopted the point system
in 1967 but a point system doesn’t
matter at all if the economic class of
immigrants is small that is
the proportion of human select selected
by that procedure are small and for
decades after 1967 family reunification
was the big category in the Canadian
immigration system and it’s only in the
mid 1990s that period of big change in
our attitudes that the Canadian
government squeezed family
reunifications a category and radically
increased the proportion of immigrants
in the economic class making it by far
the biggest category this is as we see
precisely the same period in which
Canadians overwhelmingly came to believe
that immigration is good for the economy
this is another slide it’s a response of
kind of respondents to the proposition
the economic impact of immigrants is
positive as you can see in the mid-1990s
the green line those who agree with that
proposition Rises substantially and it’s
stable since those are stunning numbers
in international context okay so I guess
I’m arguing here that there was an
economic context which underpinned the
willingness of Canadians to shift their
attitudes on immigration but what our
but our culture doesn’t it matter I’m
sure that faith and multiculturalism
does play a role in softening some of
the internal boundaries within Canada
but I think culture plays a very
different role in how many and who gets
through the door into the country in the
first place cross national surveys
reveal that Canadians are as insistent
as any European public that immigrate
immigrants should fit in in the current
period cultural anxieties about
immigration are clearly prominent
especially prominent in Quebec but
they’re not limited to Quebec this slide
captures excuse me responses to the
proposition that quote too many
immigrants are not adopting Canadian
values end of quote
and as you can see in the same time
period from the mid 1990s there is a
softening in the proportion of kin
who support that proposition but the
fall is not as sharp as in the economic
transformations that were the context
for these changing attitudes and there’s
a rise the those attitudes will the
sense that too many immigrants are not
adopting Canadian values bumps up again
in the period from about 2007 to about
2015
one of my colleagues had the was unkind
enough to call it the Kenny bump not
surprisingly in our statistical analysis
half of Canadians who are worried about
whether immigrants are adopting values
the 51 52 percent are adopting our
values are much less likely to support
ambitious immigration levels and these
cultural anxieties are undoubtedly Kevin
Dudley contributed to and being
reinforced by the increased political
polarization over immigration of recent
years conservative supporters and
supporters of other political parties
now differ significantly in their views
on immigration and this greater
polarization helps explain a the greater
political contestation over these issues
in recent years so if we step back and
ask how did those in what context is
those big-eyed that big pattern of
attitudes towards immigration shift I
think there is both an economic and a
cultural story the dramatic growth and
Canadian support for immigration in the
1990s and it’s stability through the
2000s was underpinned by economic
factors a comparatively low unemployment
rate and the transformation of in
immigration into an economic instrument
cultural anxiety Diddy’s but it remains
significant in the Canadian context but
so far however the widespread belief in
immigration is good for the economy
offsets these lingering cultural
anxieties at least in the data analysis
that we’ve done okay so looking forward
what what value is this kind of analysis
what are the implications what does it
tell us in 2016 the Advisory Council on
economic growth to the minister finance
of the federal government urged that the
federal government raise immigration
levels two to four thousand four hundred
and fifty thousand by 2021 an increase
of over fifty percent over the level
that had prevailed at that time as part
of a strategy of growing the Canadian
population dramatically so far the
federal government has avoided such a
bold commitment and has raised the
target to three hundred and fifty
thousand which is still a significant
increase over the patterns that have
persisted throughout the 2000s when the
number fluctuated between about two
hundred and fifty thousand and two
hundred and eighty thousand now what is
striking is that so far there’s although
there’s been pushback
we’ve seen political pushback largely
rooted and cultural anxieties the basic
fundamentals of Canadian support have
not shifted the continued decline in the
unemployment rate I suspect as an
important that we’re slipping down into
the five percent range and so perhaps we
are on good solid ground still but are
we good to go with a big jump because
this is a time this may be Canada’s time
baby this is a time when we can grow
when we can given the fact that other
countries are turning away people move
aggressively is this our time to move
aggressively into a much more expansive
immigration world I have a word of
caution I think we’re in a curious
period the unemployment rate is no
longer a good proxy for Economic
Security despite such low unemployment
as we enjoy at the moment Canadians are
uneasy even anxious about their economic
prospects and the economic prospects of
their children growing inequality
disrupted in the global economy the
economic excuse me the economics of
technological change the gig economy and
various forms of employment have
generated a palpable sense of economic
concern anxiety insecurity and the
political parties are jockeying to tap
into this unease in the current election
campaign would Canadians in this context
support big increases in the immigration
file in my view those who support
Canada’s approach to immigration
especially those who seek to grow it and
that would include me should not assume
that immigration is simply baked into
our culture and that it is sufficient on
its own to sustain an ambitious
immigration program it strikes me that
supporters including me need to focus
not just on instance instances of
cultural intolerance that still exists
but also on issues of economic anxiety
economic insecurity growing inequality
and a sort of social justice social
justice that excuse me a social justice
agenda for the population as a whole
limiting the potential for populist
backlash and hardening of the big
boundary requires working I think on
both economic and cultural justice
agendas otherwise we might end up with
Charlie Brown thank you
to talk to you this evening for seven
minutes about what I’ve called the
biggest boundary biggest at least
geographically in the Canadian context
perhaps not the most divisive sorts of
boundaries that beige Paige was speaking
about maybe more intensely divisive but
it the boundaries I want to talk about
generated by the system of immigration
are clearly powerful boundaries there
are a legal boundary and in some cases
of physical one as in the case the
United States these are boundaries
between us and them
indeed immigration politics are all
about boundaries all the time these
boundaries are enforced by the state and
fear that a country’s borders are not
secure generates considerable public
anxiety in recent years many
international commentators have been
impressed by the strength of public
support for an expansive immigration
program in Canada at a time of
considerable backlash elsewhere Canada
has actually been increasing its
immigration annual intake when in late
2015 the federal government accepted
50,000 Syrian refugees most commentators
Canadian and international agreed with
The Economist magazine that the secret
to the Canadian comfort with immigration
is its distinctive culture and identity
both of which celebrate diversity and
yet there are other voices in our
politics other voices which challenge
immigration and which sight culture as a
reason for challenging the immigration
program
and for challenging multiculturalism
moreover moreover we know that populist
backlash elsewhere has been driven by a
toxic combination not just of culture
and cultural anxiety but also of economy
of economics and economic anxiety and so
I think I’m going to start by suggesting
that we should be careful about assuming
that support for immigration in this
country can be based on cultural grounds
alone I think we need to take a little
deeper so let’s step back and let’s ask
when and why the current level of
support for immigration emerged
Canadians have not always been
supportive of immigration historians
have to have documented the many dark
dark episodes in our history in the
first half of the 20th century but I
think we also need to pay much closer
attention to our recent history because
until the mid 1990s the overwhelming
bulk of Canadians believe that
immigration levels were too high this is
a chart which tracks support for
immigration in this country for and it’s
it’s the response of Canadians in a
survey to the proposition there’s too
much immigration in Canada the Green
Line shows the proportion of respondents
who agreed with that proposition and the
red line indicates the proportion of
respondents who disagreed now what is
striking here is that until the mid
1990s a substantial portion between 60
and 65 percent of Canadians thought that
immigration levels were much too high
and then stunningly strikingly rapidly
cheap things changed and Canadians
shifted their views and within five
years the proportion of Canadians who
thought that immigration levels were –
are too high
dropped significantly and those who said
who are comfortable with the existing
levels of immigration basically doubled
and this happened within five years
which is a remarkably short period of
time
and it’s these attitudes which have been
stable since then small perturbations
but that basic story continues so this
is a remarkable change and a colleague
and I have been trying to understand it
where did this come from what drove it
what sustains it our effort our efforts
of uncovered a variety factors but I
would like to stick to just to the
economy and the and our culture first on
the economy I’m very old I you know you
can tell from the color of my hair I’m
old enough to remember when the
unemployment rate in this country hits
13% in the recession of the early 1980s
and over 11% in the recession of the
early 1990s in those years support for
immigration rose and fell with the
business cycle but the unemployment rate
this unemployment rate dropped steadily
in the 1990s
Meech reaching a much lower and
relatively stable level in the 2000s and
at the moment we’re running a in a five
percent range almost a third of what it
was in the early 1980s and the Canadian
and recessions in Canada have been
relatively mild certainly the recession
of 2007 eight which was so powerfully
destructive and a lot of European
society was relatively mild here I think
that the sort of the better economic
context in which immigration attitudes
are formed makes it much more difficult
to scapegoat newcomers to complain that
immigrants are stealing our jobs and in
our work the decline in the unemployment
rate turns out to have been the
strongest individual factor in
explaining the change in attitudes the
economic impact this economic impact was
reinforced by the actual transformation
of the immigration program into an
economic program in Canada it’s a mantra
that Canada’s adopted the point system
in 1967 but a point system doesn’t
matter at all if the economic class of
immigrants is small that is
the proportion of human select selected
by that procedure are small and for
decades after 1967 family reunification
was the big category in the Canadian
immigration system and it’s only in the
mid 1990s that period of big change in
our attitudes that the Canadian
government squeezed family
reunifications a category and radically
increased the proportion of immigrants
in the economic class making it by far
the biggest category this is as we see
precisely the same period in which
Canadians overwhelmingly came to believe
that immigration is good for the economy
this is another slide it’s a response of
kind of respondents to the proposition
the economic impact of immigrants is
positive as you can see in the mid-1990s
the green line those who agree with that
proposition Rises substantially and it’s
stable since those are stunning numbers
in international context okay so I guess
I’m arguing here that there was an
economic context which underpinned the
willingness of Canadians to shift their
attitudes on immigration but what our
but our culture doesn’t it matter I’m
sure that faith and multiculturalism
does play a role in softening some of
the internal boundaries within Canada
but I think culture plays a very
different role in how many and who gets
through the door into the country in the
first place cross national surveys
reveal that Canadians are as insistent
as any European public that immigrate
immigrants should fit in in the current
period cultural anxieties about
immigration are clearly prominent
especially prominent in Quebec but
they’re not limited to Quebec this slide
captures excuse me responses to the
proposition that quote too many
immigrants are not adopting Canadian
values end of quote
and as you can see in the same time
period from the mid 1990s there is a
softening in the proportion of kin
who support that proposition but the
fall is not as sharp as in the economic
transformations that were the context
for these changing attitudes and there’s
a rise the those attitudes will the
sense that too many immigrants are not
adopting Canadian values bumps up again
in the period from about 2007 to about
2015
one of my colleagues had the was unkind
enough to call it the Kenny bump not
surprisingly in our statistical analysis
half of Canadians who are worried about
whether immigrants are adopting values
the 51 52 percent are adopting our
values are much less likely to support
ambitious immigration levels and these
cultural anxieties are undoubtedly Kevin
Dudley contributed to and being
reinforced by the increased political
polarization over immigration of recent
years conservative supporters and
supporters of other political parties
now differ significantly in their views
on immigration and this greater
polarization helps explain a the greater
political contestation over these issues
in recent years so if we step back and
ask how did those in what context is
those big-eyed that big pattern of
attitudes towards immigration shift I
think there is both an economic and a
cultural story the dramatic growth and
Canadian support for immigration in the
1990s and it’s stability through the
2000s was underpinned by economic
factors a comparatively low unemployment
rate and the transformation of in
immigration into an economic instrument
cultural anxiety Diddy’s but it remains
significant in the Canadian context but
so far however the widespread belief in
immigration is good for the economy
offsets these lingering cultural
anxieties at least in the data analysis
that we’ve done okay so looking forward
what what value is this kind of analysis
what are the implications what does it
tell us in 2016 the Advisory Council on
economic growth to the minister finance
of the federal government urged that the
federal government raise immigration
levels two to four thousand four hundred
and fifty thousand by 2021 an increase
of over fifty percent over the level
that had prevailed at that time as part
of a strategy of growing the Canadian
population dramatically so far the
federal government has avoided such a
bold commitment and has raised the
target to three hundred and fifty
thousand which is still a significant
increase over the patterns that have
persisted throughout the 2000s when the
number fluctuated between about two
hundred and fifty thousand and two
hundred and eighty thousand now what is
striking is that so far there’s although
there’s been pushback
we’ve seen political pushback largely
rooted and cultural anxieties the basic
fundamentals of Canadian support have
not shifted the continued decline in the
unemployment rate I suspect as an
important that we’re slipping down into
the five percent range and so perhaps we
are on good solid ground still but are
we good to go with a big jump because
this is a time this may be Canada’s time
baby this is a time when we can grow
when we can given the fact that other
countries are turning away people move
aggressively is this our time to move
aggressively into a much more expansive
immigration world I have a word of
caution I think we’re in a curious
period the unemployment rate is no
longer a good proxy for Economic
Security despite such low unemployment
as we enjoy at the moment Canadians are
uneasy even anxious about their economic
prospects and the economic prospects of
their children growing inequality
disrupted in the global economy the
economic excuse me the economics of
technological change the gig economy and
various forms of employment have
generated a palpable sense of economic
concern anxiety insecurity and the
political parties are jockeying to tap
into this unease in the current election
campaign would Canadians in this context
support big increases in the immigration
file in my view those who support
Canada’s approach to immigration
especially those who seek to grow it and
that would include me should not assume
that immigration is simply baked into
our culture and that it is sufficient on
its own to sustain an ambitious
immigration program it strikes me that
supporters including me need to focus
not just on instance instances of
cultural intolerance that still exists
but also on issues of economic anxiety
economic insecurity growing inequality
and a sort of social justice social
justice that excuse me a social justice
agenda for the population as a whole
limiting the potential for populist
backlash and hardening of the big
boundary requires working I think on
both economic and cultural justice
agendas otherwise we might end up with
Charlie Brown thank you
Adrian M. Owen:
Show Transcript
good evening my name is Adrienne Owen
and 22 years ago I was introduced to a
young school teacher from Cambridge in
the UK her name was Kate now Kate wasn’t
like you and she wasn’t like me she was
living in a state that used to be
referred to or was often referred to as
a persistent vegetative state
Kate was literally living on the
boundary between life and death she
would open and close her eyes she would
occasionally stare blankly around the
room she would cough she would yawn but
like all patients who were described as
being in a vegetative state Kate showed
no responses to any form of external
stimulation if you asked her to squeeze
your hand nothing you asked her to blink
her eyes nothing and again like all
patients in this condition it was
generally assumed that Kate had no
awareness that is she wasn’t aware of
who she was she wasn’t aware of where
she was and she certainly wasn’t aware
of the predicament that she was in my
colleagues and I had an idea that we
would put Kate into a brain scanner and
see whether we could work out what was
going on with her brain while she was in
the scanner we showed her pictures of
faces of her friends and family now this
is something that nobody had ever done
before at that point and to be honest
most people thought we were pretty crazy
I mean what was the point it was a waste
of time and a waste of money but
remarkably when Kate was exposed to
these pictures of faces of people she
knew her brain activated it lit up but
what did that mean was this some kind of
automatic brain response or sort of an
echo from the abyss or was this a sign
there was something more going on in
case brain than any of us knew what to
be really honest I had absolutely no
idea but we did know that we had
discovered something
it was potentially very important over
the next few years
I saw many patients who are like Kate
and we put them into brain scanners and
and we saw all sorts of responses
responses to pictures responses to words
sentences even complete stories but
still didn’t know what these brain signs
meant what did it mean when somebody’s
brain responded to a familiar stimulus
that we presented to them again was
there more going on in the brains of
these patients than any of us had up
until that point realized and it was a
night it was in 2006 that we really had
a major breakthrough I realized that if
we were going to truly understand what
was going on for these patients we would
have to get one of them to communicate
with us and not to communicate with
speech or or movements because of course
none of these patients could do that but
the question was could we get a patient
to communicate using just their brain
now Jillian was a patient who who I saw
in 2006 who had been involved in a
complex road traffic accident and when
she came to our attention she’d been in
a vegetative state for some months we
put Jillian into the scanner and we said
if you understand what we’re saying to
to you now could you imagine that you’re
waving your arms around as if you were
playing a game of tennis and remarkably
when we asked Jillian to do this an area
of her brain known as the premotor
cortex is bright up here on top of your
brain it sprung to life and that’s a
part of the brain that we know is
involved in imagining complex movements
as if you were imagining playing a game
of tennis and when we asked Jillian to
stop thinking about this activity in
this area of the brain disappeared and
we repeated this many times she was able
to produce these responses not not
physical responses but responses with
her brain whenever we asked her to do it
Jillian was conscious Jillian was in
there she was aware she just hadn’t been
able to move a single muscle in her body
to indicate this to anybody around her
now 2010
moved my research team from the
University of Cambridge to Western
University in London Ontario and within
a month of arriving in Canada I was
introduced to another patient called
Scott now like Gillian Scott had been
involved in a complicated road accident
but unlike Gillian he’d been in a
vegetative state for 12 years at the
point that we met him and very quickly I
was able to tell Scott’s family and his
doctors that he wasn’t in a vegetative
state at all he was actually aware and
this is because when we asked him to
imagine doing something in the scanner
imagine playing a game of tennis his
brain would activate in much the same
way that we had seen previously but we
wanted to push it further than that we
wanted to open a channel of
communication so that some of these
patients could actually communicate with
us and Scott showed us how to do that
over a series of many scans over many
months we taught Scott to communicate to
answer yes and no questions he would
typically imagine he was playing a game
of tennis if he wanted to answer yes to
a question or imagine a different
scenario such as moving from room to
room in his house if he wanted to for
example say no answer no until question
and in this way we were able to find out
many things about Scott about the
situation he was in about how he felt
about that about some of the memories
that he had and some of his needs and
desires including whether he was in any
pain now over the last twenty years or
so since we since we did that original
scan we’ve learned many many things
about this population of patients many
different centers around the world now
use these techniques to identify
patients who are in this condition and
even to communicate with them and it
turns out that about one in five or
twenty percent of patients who appear to
be completely vegetative completely
non-responsive are in fact aware and in
many cases for decades have been lying
silently listening to every conversation
going on around them and you might be
wondering what happened to Kate that
schoolteacher in Cambridge who started
this cascade
Avensis led me to be here today well
again remarkably after some months some
months after we scanned her kate began
to recover and she’s talked very
publicly about the many struggles she
had coming back from that boundary
between life and death she’s described
how she tried to kill herself by holding
her breath she had no other way of doing
it she’s also talked about the the
tremendous stress the terror actually
she says of being aware in the presence
of other people who have no idea that
you are there at all but for me the most
important thing that kate has taught me
over the last 20 years or so and is that
she says the day that we scanned her is
the day that she became a person again
it’s the day when people stop treating
her like an object I started to treat
her like a human being and that’s why we
do what we do and this all began for me
anyway
about almost 30 years ago now as a
journey to try and unravel the mysteries
of the brain but it’s turned into
something much more interesting and much
more personal as we try them and pull
these people back from the void try and
give them a voice and reconnect them
with the people that they love and the
people who love them and ultimately
bring them back and give them a place
where they belong
back in the land of the living thanks
very much
and 22 years ago I was introduced to a
young school teacher from Cambridge in
the UK her name was Kate now Kate wasn’t
like you and she wasn’t like me she was
living in a state that used to be
referred to or was often referred to as
a persistent vegetative state
Kate was literally living on the
boundary between life and death she
would open and close her eyes she would
occasionally stare blankly around the
room she would cough she would yawn but
like all patients who were described as
being in a vegetative state Kate showed
no responses to any form of external
stimulation if you asked her to squeeze
your hand nothing you asked her to blink
her eyes nothing and again like all
patients in this condition it was
generally assumed that Kate had no
awareness that is she wasn’t aware of
who she was she wasn’t aware of where
she was and she certainly wasn’t aware
of the predicament that she was in my
colleagues and I had an idea that we
would put Kate into a brain scanner and
see whether we could work out what was
going on with her brain while she was in
the scanner we showed her pictures of
faces of her friends and family now this
is something that nobody had ever done
before at that point and to be honest
most people thought we were pretty crazy
I mean what was the point it was a waste
of time and a waste of money but
remarkably when Kate was exposed to
these pictures of faces of people she
knew her brain activated it lit up but
what did that mean was this some kind of
automatic brain response or sort of an
echo from the abyss or was this a sign
there was something more going on in
case brain than any of us knew what to
be really honest I had absolutely no
idea but we did know that we had
discovered something
it was potentially very important over
the next few years
I saw many patients who are like Kate
and we put them into brain scanners and
and we saw all sorts of responses
responses to pictures responses to words
sentences even complete stories but
still didn’t know what these brain signs
meant what did it mean when somebody’s
brain responded to a familiar stimulus
that we presented to them again was
there more going on in the brains of
these patients than any of us had up
until that point realized and it was a
night it was in 2006 that we really had
a major breakthrough I realized that if
we were going to truly understand what
was going on for these patients we would
have to get one of them to communicate
with us and not to communicate with
speech or or movements because of course
none of these patients could do that but
the question was could we get a patient
to communicate using just their brain
now Jillian was a patient who who I saw
in 2006 who had been involved in a
complex road traffic accident and when
she came to our attention she’d been in
a vegetative state for some months we
put Jillian into the scanner and we said
if you understand what we’re saying to
to you now could you imagine that you’re
waving your arms around as if you were
playing a game of tennis and remarkably
when we asked Jillian to do this an area
of her brain known as the premotor
cortex is bright up here on top of your
brain it sprung to life and that’s a
part of the brain that we know is
involved in imagining complex movements
as if you were imagining playing a game
of tennis and when we asked Jillian to
stop thinking about this activity in
this area of the brain disappeared and
we repeated this many times she was able
to produce these responses not not
physical responses but responses with
her brain whenever we asked her to do it
Jillian was conscious Jillian was in
there she was aware she just hadn’t been
able to move a single muscle in her body
to indicate this to anybody around her
now 2010
moved my research team from the
University of Cambridge to Western
University in London Ontario and within
a month of arriving in Canada I was
introduced to another patient called
Scott now like Gillian Scott had been
involved in a complicated road accident
but unlike Gillian he’d been in a
vegetative state for 12 years at the
point that we met him and very quickly I
was able to tell Scott’s family and his
doctors that he wasn’t in a vegetative
state at all he was actually aware and
this is because when we asked him to
imagine doing something in the scanner
imagine playing a game of tennis his
brain would activate in much the same
way that we had seen previously but we
wanted to push it further than that we
wanted to open a channel of
communication so that some of these
patients could actually communicate with
us and Scott showed us how to do that
over a series of many scans over many
months we taught Scott to communicate to
answer yes and no questions he would
typically imagine he was playing a game
of tennis if he wanted to answer yes to
a question or imagine a different
scenario such as moving from room to
room in his house if he wanted to for
example say no answer no until question
and in this way we were able to find out
many things about Scott about the
situation he was in about how he felt
about that about some of the memories
that he had and some of his needs and
desires including whether he was in any
pain now over the last twenty years or
so since we since we did that original
scan we’ve learned many many things
about this population of patients many
different centers around the world now
use these techniques to identify
patients who are in this condition and
even to communicate with them and it
turns out that about one in five or
twenty percent of patients who appear to
be completely vegetative completely
non-responsive are in fact aware and in
many cases for decades have been lying
silently listening to every conversation
going on around them and you might be
wondering what happened to Kate that
schoolteacher in Cambridge who started
this cascade
Avensis led me to be here today well
again remarkably after some months some
months after we scanned her kate began
to recover and she’s talked very
publicly about the many struggles she
had coming back from that boundary
between life and death she’s described
how she tried to kill herself by holding
her breath she had no other way of doing
it she’s also talked about the the
tremendous stress the terror actually
she says of being aware in the presence
of other people who have no idea that
you are there at all but for me the most
important thing that kate has taught me
over the last 20 years or so and is that
she says the day that we scanned her is
the day that she became a person again
it’s the day when people stop treating
her like an object I started to treat
her like a human being and that’s why we
do what we do and this all began for me
anyway
about almost 30 years ago now as a
journey to try and unravel the mysteries
of the brain but it’s turned into
something much more interesting and much
more personal as we try them and pull
these people back from the void try and
give them a voice and reconnect them
with the people that they love and the
people who love them and ultimately
bring them back and give them a place
where they belong
back in the land of the living thanks
very much
Paige Raibmon:
Show Transcript
hi everyone my name is Paige ravemon I’m
a historian of settler descent my
ancestors came to Canada from Hungary
Sweden and the Russian and polish shtetl
one of them told the story of his
immigrant experience in this memoir
about life and Winnipeg’s North End I
grew up
live in and currently raised my family
on the territory of the Houma squilliam
people on the banks of the Fraser River
and I’m grateful to live there I’m also
grateful to be here today on the
territory of the Algonquin nation
remarkably I think entire cities sit on
top of these unseeded lands Vancouver my
home and Ottawa gotta know the Capital
Region my thoughts today are my own I do
not speak for indigenous people or as an
indigenous person I’ve learned from many
teachers whose influence I acknowledge
and represent here so what I’ve just
done by way of introduction is situate
myself and my knowledge I’ve told you
who I am
where I’m from where I’m at and who I
have learned from why take the time to
do this especially in seven minutes
well because and this is one of my key
points for today learning requires
exploration of one’s identity this is a
First Peoples principle of learning that
applies to all of us it invites non
indigenous learners like myself to start
with our own bounded selves rather than
with an indigenous other this matters
because we all internalize things we
learn as children our childhood
experiences become taken for granted
assumptions that we take for the norm
the boundaries of our worldview remain
invisible to us those of us with
privilege suffer this illusion the
longest because society around us
reinforces our ID
is left in place these assumptions
impede best intentioned efforts to
understand histories and people
different from our own they limit
efforts at greater inclusion and
diversity to an ad and ster approach
same cup of coffee different sweetener
feminists people of color have pointed
out the problem with this for a long
time left in place these assumptions
also leave us talking about the past
instead of about history let me explain
what I mean I’m going to take some
examples from a social studies textbook
that I recently reviewed the book aimed
to improve historical representations of
indigenous peoples and on this count it
did a good job
it also exemplified the issue that I’ve
just outlined it contained a lot about
the past and was inadequately historical
that is it treated concepts that were
specific to particular times and places
as though they were unbounded and
universal things European still pass as
universal because of the long entwined
histories of racism and colonialism one
influential scholar refers in this light
to the need to provincial eyes Europe to
demarcate the boundaries around European
knowledge making it situated local and
specific for example a well-intentioned
lesson plan could emphasize indigenous
peoples role in the fur trade with a
sentence like indigenous peoples were
highly skilled at navigating and
surviving the wilderness this makes
space for indigenous presence and
simultaneously erases indigenous peoples
ways of knowing their territory
wilderness afterall is a place that
humans neither modify nor call home
indigenous territories were homelands
and there was no wilderness similarly we
could present the range of human
interactions with the environment by
saying indigenous peoples use natural
resources in unique sophisticated ways
again this
strains indigenous people at the time
that it makes space for them in our
history Natural Resources is a
culturally specific market-driven
category for thinking about nature
treating natural resources as a
universal category implies that utility
always defines the relationship between
humans and the environment that for
example a cedar choice a cedar tree
could either be milled for lumber or be
carved into a canoe but what if a cedar
tree is your relation indigenous peoples
configure anima seek in nature and
utility in entirely different ways and
we cannot see this if we try to add and
stir them into our pre-existing category
of natural resources as I’m outlining
our conventional vocabulary attributes
and unbounded universality to many
European concepts and when we use this
vocabulary we reproduce colonialist
assumptions where I’m from it can pass
as uncontroversial to say that this man
the first governor of British Columbia
had a responsibility to maintain law and
order yet this race treats law and order
as singular as if only the British had
law and it implies that Douglass’s
responsibility was legitimately bestowed
this is a completely European
perspective indigenous peoples have
their own systems of law and
constitutionality that’s what’s going on
in the lower left hand image what
Douglas brought was British law & order’
and so we might be more specific and
clarify that the British do not have a
monopoly on law and that their sense of
responsibility was self-imposed treaties
are something that exists within
multiple systems of law and we could try
to recognize an indigenous perspective
by noting that indigenous peoples
believed treaties were land sharing
agreements but this implies that
indigenous peoples believed while
Europeans knew presumably the troops
Europeans don’t have a monopoly on truth
any more than they do on law this two
row wampum belt is a legally binding
hood national that speaks the truth of
indigenous law my contention is that
these textbook examples are cases of a
much broader phenomenon when we treat
categories like Natural Resources
wilderness or law as universal singular
and unbounded we undermine the diversity
and equity we might else well elsewhere
aim for in policy and educational
initiatives before we can seek something
called reconciliation we must admit some
things are irreconcilable we cannot
create anti-racist histories by
inserting indigenous characters into the
boundaries of our existing narratives
and categories thank you let’s see
a historian of settler descent my
ancestors came to Canada from Hungary
Sweden and the Russian and polish shtetl
one of them told the story of his
immigrant experience in this memoir
about life and Winnipeg’s North End I
grew up
live in and currently raised my family
on the territory of the Houma squilliam
people on the banks of the Fraser River
and I’m grateful to live there I’m also
grateful to be here today on the
territory of the Algonquin nation
remarkably I think entire cities sit on
top of these unseeded lands Vancouver my
home and Ottawa gotta know the Capital
Region my thoughts today are my own I do
not speak for indigenous people or as an
indigenous person I’ve learned from many
teachers whose influence I acknowledge
and represent here so what I’ve just
done by way of introduction is situate
myself and my knowledge I’ve told you
who I am
where I’m from where I’m at and who I
have learned from why take the time to
do this especially in seven minutes
well because and this is one of my key
points for today learning requires
exploration of one’s identity this is a
First Peoples principle of learning that
applies to all of us it invites non
indigenous learners like myself to start
with our own bounded selves rather than
with an indigenous other this matters
because we all internalize things we
learn as children our childhood
experiences become taken for granted
assumptions that we take for the norm
the boundaries of our worldview remain
invisible to us those of us with
privilege suffer this illusion the
longest because society around us
reinforces our ID
is left in place these assumptions
impede best intentioned efforts to
understand histories and people
different from our own they limit
efforts at greater inclusion and
diversity to an ad and ster approach
same cup of coffee different sweetener
feminists people of color have pointed
out the problem with this for a long
time left in place these assumptions
also leave us talking about the past
instead of about history let me explain
what I mean I’m going to take some
examples from a social studies textbook
that I recently reviewed the book aimed
to improve historical representations of
indigenous peoples and on this count it
did a good job
it also exemplified the issue that I’ve
just outlined it contained a lot about
the past and was inadequately historical
that is it treated concepts that were
specific to particular times and places
as though they were unbounded and
universal things European still pass as
universal because of the long entwined
histories of racism and colonialism one
influential scholar refers in this light
to the need to provincial eyes Europe to
demarcate the boundaries around European
knowledge making it situated local and
specific for example a well-intentioned
lesson plan could emphasize indigenous
peoples role in the fur trade with a
sentence like indigenous peoples were
highly skilled at navigating and
surviving the wilderness this makes
space for indigenous presence and
simultaneously erases indigenous peoples
ways of knowing their territory
wilderness afterall is a place that
humans neither modify nor call home
indigenous territories were homelands
and there was no wilderness similarly we
could present the range of human
interactions with the environment by
saying indigenous peoples use natural
resources in unique sophisticated ways
again this
strains indigenous people at the time
that it makes space for them in our
history Natural Resources is a
culturally specific market-driven
category for thinking about nature
treating natural resources as a
universal category implies that utility
always defines the relationship between
humans and the environment that for
example a cedar choice a cedar tree
could either be milled for lumber or be
carved into a canoe but what if a cedar
tree is your relation indigenous peoples
configure anima seek in nature and
utility in entirely different ways and
we cannot see this if we try to add and
stir them into our pre-existing category
of natural resources as I’m outlining
our conventional vocabulary attributes
and unbounded universality to many
European concepts and when we use this
vocabulary we reproduce colonialist
assumptions where I’m from it can pass
as uncontroversial to say that this man
the first governor of British Columbia
had a responsibility to maintain law and
order yet this race treats law and order
as singular as if only the British had
law and it implies that Douglass’s
responsibility was legitimately bestowed
this is a completely European
perspective indigenous peoples have
their own systems of law and
constitutionality that’s what’s going on
in the lower left hand image what
Douglas brought was British law & order’
and so we might be more specific and
clarify that the British do not have a
monopoly on law and that their sense of
responsibility was self-imposed treaties
are something that exists within
multiple systems of law and we could try
to recognize an indigenous perspective
by noting that indigenous peoples
believed treaties were land sharing
agreements but this implies that
indigenous peoples believed while
Europeans knew presumably the troops
Europeans don’t have a monopoly on truth
any more than they do on law this two
row wampum belt is a legally binding
hood national that speaks the truth of
indigenous law my contention is that
these textbook examples are cases of a
much broader phenomenon when we treat
categories like Natural Resources
wilderness or law as universal singular
and unbounded we undermine the diversity
and equity we might else well elsewhere
aim for in policy and educational
initiatives before we can seek something
called reconciliation we must admit some
things are irreconcilable we cannot
create anti-racist histories by
inserting indigenous characters into the
boundaries of our existing narratives
and categories thank you let’s see
Prerna Singh:
Show Transcript
whether it is Trump in the US Putin in
Russia Putin ro in Brazil or muthi in
India leaders of some of the largest
states in the world today successfully
mobilizing their people in the name of
nationalism and these strident
nationalisms in the names of dominant
ethnic groups pitted against minorities
seem to have sealed nationalisms
notorious association with
discrimination division and destruction
indeed many scholars would say that the
last analogous global upsurge of
nationalism culminated in the Second
World War and writing in that context
Albert Einstein had famously termed
nationalism as the measles of mankind
and infantile disease that we would
outgrow with modernity and these twin
assumptions that nationalism is evil and
that it would fade away particularly
with the universalizing power of the
market has brought together scholars as
ideologically opposed as Karl Marx to
Francis Fukuyama
and yet here we are today I’m thrilled
nursing and I’m here to tell you that
this persistence of nationalism is not
necessarily bad news 400 years ago the
Treaty of Westphalia established now
salute nationalism as the legitimating
ideology on the basis of which states
rule and will continue to live today in
this world of nation-states even with
some attenuation of their power with
globalization’s
nations remain the central form of
political community the key units that
we have today for administering justice
and so in as much as nations are here to
stay so too is nationalism and this is
because at its root nationalism is
especially powerful type of group
identity and as such it fulfills both a
fundamental biological need
that we have as humans for living in
groups as well as a psychological need
for community as a source of validation
and self-esteem belonging to a national
political community has been shown to
protect us from feelings of alienation
of solitude and giving us a sense of
autonomy critically my own research as a
political scientist has shown that
nationalism is also an important driver
for the functioning of liberal
democracies and the realization of
social political and economic freedoms
liberal democratic states Oh citizens
rights and citizens in turn are obliged
to fulfill certain duties towards the
state national solidarities infuse these
technical ties of citizenship with with
what scholars have termed the magic of
my I feel a stronger sense of commitment
to words I’m more motivated to work for
the welfare of my group my family my
nation experiments in Social Psychology
have shown that this is because we feel
a sense of weenus an idea of a linked
fate a shared destiny my own individual
welfare is that is linked to that of my
national community as a whole
nationalisms makes a state home the
obligations that are owed by leaders and
citizens are not just to a political
administrative unit they are to my
people to my homeland in my research
I’ve shown how on the one hand these
obligations of nationalism encourage
state leaders to prioritize the welfare
of the people
national solidarities were important
factors in the institution of social
welfare regimes across Europe in Canada
as well as in India on the other hand
national attachments also motivates
citizens to make sacrifices for the
state sacrifices of time and effort when
we vote and participate politically of
money when we pay our taxes on time and
honestly and the most supreme sacrifice
of all of our lives when we joined the
army
and fight for our country but in as much
as national solidarities are a powerful
constructive force they are bounded like
all groups nations have boundaries those
who belong and those who do not for
nation states this question of who is in
and who is out has a literal meaning
those who are outside its geographic
boundaries are also usually outside its
boundaries of belonging so Americans for
instance do not see Canadians as Co
Nationals which of course I know you’re
all deeply relieved about there is
nothing to condemn in national
boundaries per se a healthy drive for
national distinctiveness has driven
important contributions in the arts
think for example of Russian literature
of Cuban music of French cinema or thigh
cuisine and competition for national
achievement is of course the lifeblood
of sports
Miraval research has shown that there is
no reciprocal relationship between
in-group and out-group attitudes what
this means is that love for one’s own
nation does not necessarily imply
hostility or hate towards another nation
it can involve distancing indifference
or as in the case of Canadian
nationalism vis a vie or southern
neighbors maybe just a little disdain
the real question for nation-states is
whether the boundaries of belonging
include those who are located within our
physical boundaries minorities
native-born as well as immigrants and
refugees the present crop of
nationalisms is so virulent and so
vicious there is almost made us forget
that nationalism is fundamentally about
love about fraternity and about unity a
useful analogy for thinking about
nationalism is that national identities
are not like hats or identities more
broadly are not like hats we do wear one
at one more than one
one time so national identities are
compatible with and research has shown
are actually reinforced by other
identities such as gender class and
ethnicity and they also sit quite
comfortably with universal human
cosmopolitan identities nationalism scan
and have historically on many instances
been constructed to include minorities
through various models of integration
and here Canadian multiculturalism shows
us simultaneously the possibility of how
ethnic minorities linguistic and
religious can be included as well as the
challenge of how much more needs to be
done for instance in the inclusion of
indigenous people but it as much as it
is challenging building inclusive
nations is necessary indeed I would
argue it’s one of the most urgent tasks
facing us today in America where I live
nationalism has become synonymous with
white Christian nationalism and an India
where I grew up and which I study it has
become equated with Hindu nationalism
but this is not a reason to give up on
nationalism in fact it is precisely the
reason we must not give up on it but
instead fight to reclaim it from these
exclusive definitions and to put forward
more expansive ideas of us to widen the
boundaries of our national we through
policies of representation and
redistribution is also through everyday
practices about the flags we fly the
statues we erect the festivals we
celebrate in the songs that we sing such
an inclusive nationalism can promote
those very freedoms that the exclusive
nationalisms of today are threatening
this is a nationalism that we must fight
for thank you
Russia Putin ro in Brazil or muthi in
India leaders of some of the largest
states in the world today successfully
mobilizing their people in the name of
nationalism and these strident
nationalisms in the names of dominant
ethnic groups pitted against minorities
seem to have sealed nationalisms
notorious association with
discrimination division and destruction
indeed many scholars would say that the
last analogous global upsurge of
nationalism culminated in the Second
World War and writing in that context
Albert Einstein had famously termed
nationalism as the measles of mankind
and infantile disease that we would
outgrow with modernity and these twin
assumptions that nationalism is evil and
that it would fade away particularly
with the universalizing power of the
market has brought together scholars as
ideologically opposed as Karl Marx to
Francis Fukuyama
and yet here we are today I’m thrilled
nursing and I’m here to tell you that
this persistence of nationalism is not
necessarily bad news 400 years ago the
Treaty of Westphalia established now
salute nationalism as the legitimating
ideology on the basis of which states
rule and will continue to live today in
this world of nation-states even with
some attenuation of their power with
globalization’s
nations remain the central form of
political community the key units that
we have today for administering justice
and so in as much as nations are here to
stay so too is nationalism and this is
because at its root nationalism is
especially powerful type of group
identity and as such it fulfills both a
fundamental biological need
that we have as humans for living in
groups as well as a psychological need
for community as a source of validation
and self-esteem belonging to a national
political community has been shown to
protect us from feelings of alienation
of solitude and giving us a sense of
autonomy critically my own research as a
political scientist has shown that
nationalism is also an important driver
for the functioning of liberal
democracies and the realization of
social political and economic freedoms
liberal democratic states Oh citizens
rights and citizens in turn are obliged
to fulfill certain duties towards the
state national solidarities infuse these
technical ties of citizenship with with
what scholars have termed the magic of
my I feel a stronger sense of commitment
to words I’m more motivated to work for
the welfare of my group my family my
nation experiments in Social Psychology
have shown that this is because we feel
a sense of weenus an idea of a linked
fate a shared destiny my own individual
welfare is that is linked to that of my
national community as a whole
nationalisms makes a state home the
obligations that are owed by leaders and
citizens are not just to a political
administrative unit they are to my
people to my homeland in my research
I’ve shown how on the one hand these
obligations of nationalism encourage
state leaders to prioritize the welfare
of the people
national solidarities were important
factors in the institution of social
welfare regimes across Europe in Canada
as well as in India on the other hand
national attachments also motivates
citizens to make sacrifices for the
state sacrifices of time and effort when
we vote and participate politically of
money when we pay our taxes on time and
honestly and the most supreme sacrifice
of all of our lives when we joined the
army
and fight for our country but in as much
as national solidarities are a powerful
constructive force they are bounded like
all groups nations have boundaries those
who belong and those who do not for
nation states this question of who is in
and who is out has a literal meaning
those who are outside its geographic
boundaries are also usually outside its
boundaries of belonging so Americans for
instance do not see Canadians as Co
Nationals which of course I know you’re
all deeply relieved about there is
nothing to condemn in national
boundaries per se a healthy drive for
national distinctiveness has driven
important contributions in the arts
think for example of Russian literature
of Cuban music of French cinema or thigh
cuisine and competition for national
achievement is of course the lifeblood
of sports
Miraval research has shown that there is
no reciprocal relationship between
in-group and out-group attitudes what
this means is that love for one’s own
nation does not necessarily imply
hostility or hate towards another nation
it can involve distancing indifference
or as in the case of Canadian
nationalism vis a vie or southern
neighbors maybe just a little disdain
the real question for nation-states is
whether the boundaries of belonging
include those who are located within our
physical boundaries minorities
native-born as well as immigrants and
refugees the present crop of
nationalisms is so virulent and so
vicious there is almost made us forget
that nationalism is fundamentally about
love about fraternity and about unity a
useful analogy for thinking about
nationalism is that national identities
are not like hats or identities more
broadly are not like hats we do wear one
at one more than one
one time so national identities are
compatible with and research has shown
are actually reinforced by other
identities such as gender class and
ethnicity and they also sit quite
comfortably with universal human
cosmopolitan identities nationalism scan
and have historically on many instances
been constructed to include minorities
through various models of integration
and here Canadian multiculturalism shows
us simultaneously the possibility of how
ethnic minorities linguistic and
religious can be included as well as the
challenge of how much more needs to be
done for instance in the inclusion of
indigenous people but it as much as it
is challenging building inclusive
nations is necessary indeed I would
argue it’s one of the most urgent tasks
facing us today in America where I live
nationalism has become synonymous with
white Christian nationalism and an India
where I grew up and which I study it has
become equated with Hindu nationalism
but this is not a reason to give up on
nationalism in fact it is precisely the
reason we must not give up on it but
instead fight to reclaim it from these
exclusive definitions and to put forward
more expansive ideas of us to widen the
boundaries of our national we through
policies of representation and
redistribution is also through everyday
practices about the flags we fly the
statues we erect the festivals we
celebrate in the songs that we sing such
an inclusive nationalism can promote
those very freedoms that the exclusive
nationalisms of today are threatening
this is a nationalism that we must fight
for thank you
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